take my moth eggs! please!

July 6, 2006 9:58 AM

I woke up this morning to find that a moth had laid eggs on a curtain in the computer room. How do I get them off?

The moth is dead (and disposed of), and I'll put up a picture of the eggs shortly.

posted by heeeraldo to home & garden (6 answers total)

Until you post pictures and we know things like how many eggs, over what area, how big the eggs are, etc, I dunno how much anyone here will be able to help you.
posted by schroedinger at 11:20 AM on July 6, 2006

Just wipe them off?
posted by LadyBonita at 11:32 AM on July 6, 2006

A thorough shaking followed by the rinse cycle? Or is the tenacity of moth eggs legendary and I just never heard about it?
posted by Terminal Verbosity at 11:37 AM on July 6, 2006

I think we need the photo, because I'm not sure why the obvious things won't work.

If you're looking for something weird, then I suggest suck them off with a straw. Some cultures consider them a delicacy. (P.S. Not really)
posted by IvyMike at 11:44 AM on July 6, 2006

I would get a metal scraper (the kind you'd use to scrape paint off a window) and gently scrape them off into a can and then crush or burn the eggs. I don't think it should be a problem to simply scrape them off the curtain.. It's not like if you leave behind a tiny trace of one egg, something could hatch from that.

For adults/caterpilars, I love the good ole can-of-soapy water trick. Just drop them in and the lack of surface tension means they drown. It's much less messy than crushing them or whatnot, and kind of seems more humane I guess. If you do that though, make sure you only put the bug in. There was a time when I was pulling leaf-footed bugs off the tomato and put the tomato leaves/stem in the can as well, and they crawled out via the stem.
posted by mojabunni at 7:25 AM on July 7, 2006

as it turned out, they wouldn't vacuum off because the bagless bag thing was full, so I emptied it and the eggs came away with no problem.

man, I feel silly.
posted by heeeraldo at 11:56 AM on July 7, 2006